Alan Snider  - May 9, 2005 10:44 am (#9817 Total: 9825)  
On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's 
Cauldron"; and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming 
Group" in Vancouver, Canada with a retail store of it's 
own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/ 	
 
GAMENIGHT, May 7th: Terence Co dropped by early in the day to get the
long awaited first playthrough for BSO Games "Zama" underway. Terence
took the Romans, while I took Hannibal and his Carthaginian forces. 

The physical components of the game are a bit of a mixed bag. The
counters by Mike Lemick are possibly his best work...ever. The map is a
bit of a letdown though, as it is simply a black and white grid of
squares. This will not affect the gameplay, as the actual battle
happened in a field of Hannibals' choosing, and all terrain can be
considered clear. The countersheets were not arranged in a way such that
rigging up 2-sided counters can be easily assembled. I suffered through
10 hours of assembly to get those counters set up right, cutting each
individual side of a counters separately. The results were beautiful
though, and the effort was not wasted. 

The Carthaginian player gets to move first, which opened up the first
tricky bit of the mechanics... Is it best to use up one's "group" move
card early to close ground, or is it best used later to shore up battle
lines after an attempted set of maneuvers. I chose to save it for later
and use 4 cards of MP's to move my front line forward, but not within
range of the enemy. 

I found it to be a bit overwhelming to guess as to what cards I might
need a bit later ie. rally or cavalry charge cards. Instead I used them
in the first 2 turns as movement points. As both players were reluctant
to make the first set of attacks, the Romans chose to pounce using the
group move card in turn 3. This revealed the next tricky bit: one can
only launch one attack per round of movement, so when combines too many
cards in a round; one limits the number of total attacks during a turn.
It seems better to attack in short small attacks; then either recover
using a rally card, or use a group move card to reduce the amount of
vulnerable flanks (particularly with infantry). 

The battle then got locked up full force during turn 3. It reminded me
of the "Twilights' Last Gleaming" system from DG, in that once locked in
battle, it is likely the battle willl continue until someone retreats or
is destroyed. We also found it important to leave a line of empty space
to cover retreats..otherwise one makes it to easy for ones' opponent to
eliminate your units. 

The attacks by both sides see-sawed, with both sides taking nearly equal
losses. Hannibal had atempted a few early outflanking movements, but as
the game alternates in mavement/battle rounds, this simply opens up
ones' own troops to being outflanked. This was a limiting feature of the
square hexes, and facing being to a side rather than a corner of a hex.
I will say this is the most 'gamey" feature of the design, but RHB
clearly states that this is a game rather than a simulation. 

The Romans made a last ditch attempt on turn 6 (final turn) to eliminate
Hannibal, but were unable to do so. This left the victory point tally at
the end of the game at 54-43 for the Carthaginians. The early victories
in the initial assault proved to be the difference in the game. 

While I was really hoping to like this game, I found it clunky and gamey
in its' mechanics. I sense that the key may be in the cardplay and
measuring out grande movement vs. staccato attacks as your carddraw and
situation on the gameboard dictate. The game may offer much more than I
have been able to figure out so far, and Terence will take it home to
give a few more spins prior to writing his review, as it will be
interesting to find out if creative cardplay can overcome the clunkiness
of the facing rules. If one can find a way to gain an edge tactically
without giving away an equal opportunity to ones' opponent, it will
really open the game up.